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In mid-February 2016 the Hessian State Secretary Mark Weinmeister visited the International Tracing Service (ITS) on the invitation of the ITS Director Floriane Hohenberg. Together with Thomas Viesehon, member of the German Parliament, Armin Schwarz, member of the Hessian Parliament and Jürgen van der Horst, Mayor of...

Four students of the Hanzehoge School Groningen visited the International Tracing service (ITS) in November 2015 to obtain documents for their documentary ‘In stilte stuurde het mijn leven’ (It silently directed my life). Here they talk about their project.

In conjunction with the prosecution of the perpetrators, the compensation of the victims, and public commemoration, the circle of officially recognized victims of Nazi persecution has repeatedly been redefined and widened. The International Tracing Service (ITS) sheds light on various aspects of this process – as well...

The roughly 30 million original documents preserved in the ITS Archive provide information on the fates of the many victims of Nazi persecution, and form a unique memorial made of paper. To support the preservation of these valuable documents, Italy as 2015/2016 Chair of the International Commission has started an...

The theme of the 2014/2015 history competition of the German President was „Being different. Outsiders in history“. One of the entry requirements was to have either a family-related or a place-related connection to the chosen topic. I decided to write about handicapped/ill people who had lived in the period from...

On the eve of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January, the Berlin historian Alina Bothe held a fact-filled lecture for some 70 guests on the so-called “Polenaktion” from October 1938. In this first mass deportation, 16,000 to 17,000 Jews of Polish nationality were forcibly transported out of the German...

For three years the U.S. American historian Prof. Dr. Rebecca Boehling headed the International Tracing Service (ITS) during its decisive restructuring phase towards becoming an internationally positioned Archive and Documentation Center on National Socialist persecution and the liberated survivors. At the invitation...

When the Gestapo arrested Helga Thörl, then a young woman from Hamburg, in April 1945 they stripped her of all her personal belongings, among them a wristwatch. In November 2015 the ITS was able to return this wristwatch to the now 91-year-old. For the first time in many years the ITS could personally return a stolen...